John Ivison: Even after bumbling on abortion leads to five weeks of bad press, Trudeau looks golden

It wasn’t quite Tom Cruise on Oprah’s couch, but Justin Trudeau’s meltdown in front of the cameras was the stuff of political nightmares.

The Liberal leader was asked May 7 if abortion votes would be free or whipped. Pretty straightforward for the potential leader of a G7 nation, you might think.

But Mr. Trudeau bubbled nonsense like an accident victim. “That is an issue that [long pause, gaze into the distance] … I’ve committed … well it’s a tough one…”

He proceeded to announce a new policy that will require all future Liberal MPs to vote “pro-choice,’’ while grandfathering existing MPs “to a certain extent.”

The press conference sparked five weeks of largely negative coverage, neatly summed up by Calgary Herald columnist Naomi Lakritz: “He doesn’t seem to have any fine mesh in his brain through which his thoughts pass.”

The net result? The weekly Nanos Research tracking poll of leadership preferences found that Mr. Trudeau hit a 10-month high in popularity this week. The man is bulletproof — at least 16 months out from an election.

Now that school is out for summer, Mr. Trudeau and his advisers will take stock of six months that saw some important structural developments in the Liberal Party — the casting out of the Senate caucus; the recruitment of high-profile star candidates; and the laying of foundations of an election platform.

Behind the scenes, things have gone well. The party signed its 140,000th member this week — up from 40,000 before the leadership. Star candidates are being added, although the rumour that former astronaut Chris Hadfield is on board was shot down by his brand manager, Aaron Murphy, who said Mr. Hadfield has “no intention of running for any political office.”

New policy was given a trial run at the policy convention in Montreal — most prominently, the rather arbitrary commitment to wrack up more “paper deficits” to fund 1% of GDP on “strategic infrastructure.”

In public, things have been less smooth. The wind was taken out of Mr. Trudeau’s campaign to save the middle class when Statistics Canada reported family unit income has risen 45% since 2005 — and nearly 80% since 1999.

Much of the more recent negative publicity the party has attracted has been related to contested nomination battles, which were always going to produce turbulence after the leader raised the bar to unattainable levels by promising “open, fair and transparent” contests.

In the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, Christine Innes, a candidate who was blocked to run in the June 30 by-election by the leadership over alleged bullying and intimidation tactics, is now suing Mr. Trudeau for libel.

The new Liberal policy on “pro-choice” voting was bound to create fallout, but Liberal insiders say it had to be done to stymie 35-40 anti-abortion candidates who had emerged to contest nominations in a number of Western and rural ridings. “It was all cost and no benefit,” said one senior Liberal. “We didn’t want to have to deal with this in the middle of a campaign.”

Mr. Trudeau’s deer in the headlights moment came when he weighed up whether to announce the policy in a scrum. He has spent the last month trying to clarify what he really meant to say.

The whole saga has dented the Liberal reputation as the big tent party. Mr. Trudeau’s performance has reinforced the impression among those people who question his capability to lead that every time he opens his mouth, he subtracts from the general knowledge.

His subsequent statement that “male legislators” should have no voice in the abortion debate has drawn particular ire from commentators who point out that, in a representative democracy, elected officials are expected to represent all their constituents on all issues.

The Liberal leader will be in Trinity-Spadina this Saturday, helping candidate Adam Vaughan persuade voters to head to the advance polls since the by-election is on Canada Day weekend. This is good use of Mr. Trudeau’s undoubted star power.

But the firm belief among Conservatives is that Canadians will come to their senses when forced to choose between a callow Mr. Trudeau, mouthing a bland of generalities like “hope and hard work,” and the solid, experienced Stephen Harper.

Those same people would probably have scoffed at Bill Clinton’s appearance on the Arsenio Hall Show in 1992, playing Heartbreak Hotel on the saxophone. To some, it made him seem lightweight — but it cemented his reputation among young people and minorities, catapulting him ahead of George H.W. Bush in the polls.

Mr. Trudeau has had his most challenging six months since entering politics, yet he and his party retain a healthy lead in most polls. The Liberals have successfully positioned themselves as the standard-bearers of progressive Canada, while Thomas Mulcair’s popularity languishes, in part because he took it upon himself to defend the indefensible use of House of Commons resources for partisan purposes.

Pollster Nik Nanos says that the Liberal leader’s popularity actually rises when he is not in the news — “then people are left with the idea of Justin Trudeau.” He sounds and looks modern, even if many ideas are as threadbare on detail as an old carpet.

Mr. Trudeau is a smart man and a natural politician who makes contrivance look uncontrived. But he is not blessed with the practical intelligence that guides politicians on what to say and to whom, when to say it and how to say it for maximum effect.

The Liberal leader’s promotion to the prime minister’s office is not pre-ordained. If he makes what one of his own MPs called “bozo eruptions” during an election campaign, voters will conclude he couldn’t run a two house paper route.

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